The power of social media to burrow dramatically into our everyday lives as well as the near ubiquity of new technologies such as mobile phones has forced us all to conceptualize the digital and the physical; the on- and off-line.

And some have a bias to see the digital and the physical as separate; what I am calling digital dualism. Digital dualists believe that the digital world is “virtual” and the physical world “real.” This bias motivates many of the critiques of sites like Facebook and the rest of the social web and I fundamentally think this digital dualism is a fallacy. Instead, I want to argue that the digital and physical are increasingly meshed, and want to call this opposite perspective that implodes atoms and bits rather than holding them conceptually separate augmented reality.

In a 2009 post titled “Towards Theorizing An Augmented Reality,” I discussed geo-tagging (think Foursquare or Facebook Places), street view, face recognition, the Wii controller and the fact that sites like Facebook both impact and are impacted by the physical world to argue that “digital and material realities dialectically co-construct each other.” This is opposed to the notion that the Internet is like the Matrix, where there is a “real” (Zion) that you leave when you enter the virtual space (the Matrix) -an outdated perspective as Facebook is increasingly real and our physical world increasingly digital.

I have used this perspective of augmentation to critque dualism when I see it. For instance, last year I posted a rebuttal to the digital-dualist critique of so-called “slacktivism” that claimed “real” activism is being traded for a cyber-based slacker activism. No, cyber-activism should be seen in context with physical world activism and how they interact. Taken alone, yes, much of the cyber-activism would not amount to much. But used in conjunction with offline efforts, it can be powerful. And, of course, my point is much, much easier to make with the subsequent uprisings in the Arab world that utilize both digital and physical organizing. This augmented dissent will be a topic for another post.

Recently, I have critiqued “cyborg anthropologist” Amber Case for her use of Turkle’s outdated term “second self” to describe our online presence. My critique was that conceptually splitting so-called “first” and “second” selves creates a “false binary” because “people are enmeshing their physical and digital selves to the point where the distinction is becoming increasingly irrelevant.” [I’ll offer my own take for what that digital presence should be called in a soon-to-come post.]

But the dualism keeps rolling in. There are the popular books that typically critique social media from the digital dualist perspective. Besides Turkle’s Alone Together, there is Carr’s The Shallows, Morozov’s The Net Delusion, Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation, Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur,Siegel’s Against the Machine, Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget, and the list goes on (we can even include the implicit argument in the 2010 blockbuster movie The Social Network). All of these argue that the problem with social media is that people are trading the rich, physical and real nature of face-to face contact for the digital, virtual and trivial quality of Facebook. The critique stems from the systematic bias to see the digital and physical as separate; often as a zero-sum tradeoff where time and energy spent on one subtracts from the other. This is digital dualism par excellence. And it is a fallacy.

I am proposing an alternative view that states that our reality is both technological and organic, both digital and physical, all at once. We are not crossing in and out of separate digital and physical realities, ala The Matrix, but instead live in one reality, one that is augmented by atoms and bits. And our selves are not separated across these two spheres as some dualistic “first” and “second” self, but is instead an augmented self. A Haraway-like cyborg self comprised of a physical body as well as our digital Profile, acting in constant dialogue. Our Facebook profiles reflect who we know and what we do offline, and our offline lives are impacted by what happens on Facebook (e.g., how we might change our behaviors in order to create a more ideal documentation).

Most importantly, research demonstrates what social media users already know: we are not trading one reality for another at all, but, instead, using sites like Facebook and others actually increase offline interaction. This is not zero-sum dualism. As the famous Network Society theorist Manuel Castells stated earlier this month,

Nobody who is on social networks everyday (and this is true for some 700 million of the 1,200 million social network users) is still the same person. It’s an online/offline interaction, not an esoteric virtual world.

None of this is to say that social media and the web should not be critiqued. Indeed, it should be, and I hope to do that work myself. However, critiques of social media should begin with the idea of augmented reality. Is a reality augmented by digitality a good thing? My job with this post is not to answer that question, but to help make it possible.

Comments

i’m in full agreement of the way you frame this…i think the binary distinctions between real and virtual are not only misleading but dangerous, in that they reify distinctions that don’t represent practices, and that leads thinking into the realm of sheer ideology.

but i still want a way to talk about people’s digital presence specifically, because the operations of power and interaction are not actually the same online as they are in so-called “real life,” no matter whether we try to conduct ourselves the same or no. and i want a way to trace what those operations and circulations of technology and human and capital without trying to pretend that the subjects online are fully distinct from their physical selves. i still think that our online existence takes on something of a life of its own, that often expands our subjectivity beyond what’s available to us in our embodied worlds.

how to do that and avoid being understood as a digital dualist? dunno. working on it.

i’m in full agreement of the way you frame this…i think the binary distinctions between real and virtual are not only misleading but dangerous, in that they reify distinctions that don’t represent practices, and that leads thinking into the realm of sheer ideology.

Yes!

but i still want a way to talk about people’s digital presence specifically, because the operations of power and interaction are not actually the same online as they are in so-called “real life,” no matter whether we try to conduct ourselves the same or no. and i want a way to trace what those operations and circulations of technology and human and capital without trying to pretend that the subjects online are fully distinct from their physical selves. i still think that our online existence takes on something of a life of its own, that often expands our subjectivity beyond what’s available to us in our embodied worlds.

absolutely. the properties of atoms and bits are different. presentation and documentation thus following different trajectories. all of the sociological stuff like power, inequalities, domination, identity, subjectivity and so on play out differently when the very rules of the environment are changed. i wrote a book chapter called “The DeMcDonaldization of the Internet” that argued that rationalization proliferates in the physical world because atoms are scarce, meanwhile some inefficiency is permitted in the digital realm because bits are (almost) infinitely replicated. all this to say that i agree that conceptualizing the digital and physical alone is indeed an important task.

however, the point of this post is to argue that any conceptualizing/theorizing about the digital and physical alone should always take into account that the two are highly enmeshed. i am not opposed to thinking about one sphere alone because it will give us a better understanding of our augmented reality. yes, the digital and physical are different, but they are increasingly blurring together. and i think we (as well as most anyone who actually uses social media) agree on this, and all i am doing is trying to do some concept/category work. just trying to find the right words!

I think the notion of “blended” reality is deployed very, very similarly to my usage of augmented reality. If there is a difference, I would say that my scope is a bit more broad, abstract whereas your paper, to its credit, focuses better on specific technical changes. Very good to see this all applied quite literally with concrete, empirical examples. My broader scope would include the ways in which technologies such as language or architecture count as augmented reality (which is why I agree with you that reality has always been augmented). Also, I would look at how subjectivities and the self are augmented, how our behaviors, desires, very consciousness is changed by the digitality (I very much agree with your social construction angle in all of this). Though, I do not think your scheme precludes this sort of thinking.

I really liked your correction and update of the “dual reality” term, especially Lifton’s statement that each of the realities is “is complete unto themselves.” That is something that I would want to break down, and argue you have to see the one in light of the other.

Nice piece. For AR this is definitely a main hurdle to overcome. And its a big meme so not an easy one.

I agree that digital dualism is not real. I think its the same person who acts differently in different contexts.

It reminds me of people (in Holland where I live and work) who think that at work they should be and act different then at home. Not all but a substantial group. Key is that they are the same person, they just act differently in different contexts.

The same case can be made for commenting on flickr or on AVC’s blog. You may have different styles yet are the same person. You can even make this known if you choose by using the same handle or your real name.

Great post Nathan! Love the picture at the top too, where’s that from? Looks like a Cronenberg movie.

I’m on board with your critique, and I love that the theory is deep but the language relatively plain. Nice balance!

I think the next step is a Derridian deconstruction of the real–virtual binary, asking why there’s so much psychic, material, and emotional investment in maintaining division. What power relations does it support and which bodies does it obscure? N Katherine Hayles starts working towards this How We Became Posthuman, but I think there’s still work to be done. And this is something written into our most fundamental concepts of information.

Basically, I feel the real-virtual binary is a different flavor of an old bias from our liberal, humanist, Enlightenment-era intellectual ancestry. We want to think we have a singular, rational mind/soul/self unaffected by other minds, environments, or even our physical interactions. We don’t like to acknowledge how our selves our co-constructed with other selves, environments, and things because then we would lose our magical agency and have to acknowledge the power of structures. This is a racist, sexist ideology too (something that pops up again with poststructuralism) because the only people who have the privilege to deny their situation within power relations are those at the top of the heap. Reinforcing the real–virtual binary is one way of doing this: “I have a textual Facebook mind, and a physical offline body, but never the twain shall meet”.

Dan – these are great thoughts! I’d love it if you’d like to expand this to its own blog post.

Yes, the image is indeed from a Cronenberg movie: Videodrome. I am fully confident that Videodrome is THE film that captures the phenomenon of Facebook. It is fundamentally about the implosion of media and physicality, the image and the flesh. “Long live the new flesh”, Videodrome’s tag line, really could be the tag line for the whole cyborgology project. The image captures a moment of the implosion of the body and media. Cronenberg has other highly relevant films, too (especially eXistenZ).

Your commentary about why we have the digital dualist bias towards binaries is wonderful. I think you are dead on about the enlightenment bias towards the special, agentic, authentic and separate self. I think PJ Rey would correctly chime in that its roots are in the Christian notion of the soul. How could that sparkling magic soul thing in my belly (the belly, right?) possibly be co-created and augmented when it is a gift from god in his own image?

Debunking the digital dualism bias probably will be parallel to the project of debunking the authentic self, the agent, and all those other essentialisms that theorists need to take on!

This binary has been around a since, at least, Plato. For Plato, the material world consisted of imperfect approximations of perfect immaterial forms. That worldview was later appropriated by Christian scholars and became a dominant ideology in the Western world. Man (sic) was created in the (perfect) image of God, right? How, then, could he be imperfect? By the time Descartes rolls around, “the mind-body problem” has become a central concern of Enlightenment philosophy. He, somewhat humorously, tries to resolve this issue with a fanciful discussion of the pineal gland: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pineal-gland/ .

Freud marks a pretty major turning point. He recognizes that the mind (though itself fragmented) is pretty strongly linked with physical aliments. More recently, neurobiology has traced causality in the opposite direction.

In any case, we, in the West, have always had trouble defining the boundaries of the self. Today, any account that ignores the physical body or the immaterial social persona (including the entirety of one’s online [capital “P”] Profile) is rather impotent.

Most of the “blame” for treating our use of the Internet as an online/offline dichotomy stems from literature like Turkle’s work in the 80s and 90s, all the work on MUDs, and media portrayals of online interactions such as the “Rape in Cyberspace.” These works went far beyond the belief that we selectively self-present online (which we all most certainly do to some extent) to this idea that people used the anonymity of online interactions to become someone else, whether it was gender-bending or, as encompassed in the online disinhibition effect, flaming and harassing strangers online.

While I think there are plenty of examples are people merely transporting their existent selves into an online space (Rheingold’s discussion of the WELL comes to mind), SNSs–and especially Facebook–were a game changer. Facebook’s primary goal is to connect you to people from all stages of your life. These are pre-existing relationships, not new friends or romantic partners (for the most part). And when we are taking our “offline” identity and exporting it to an online space comprised of our offline connections, we are probably not going to radically diverge from that offline identity. Sure, there are exceptions, but they’re exactly that–exceptions.

Most of the research that comes out of my lab (https://www.msu.edu/~nellison/TOIL/) highlights that online and offline should not be treated as distinct environments, even though we often argue that SNSs’ unique features, such as the Friend List, do impact some of our communication behaviors. We do a lot of research on SNSs using social capital as a framework. Dmitri Williams, who developed social capital scales in 2006, distinguished between “online” and “offline” social capital, but we refrain from doing so. In a recent study, we did ask participants about their “general” social capital (including ALL of their connections) and their perceived social capital derived from interactions with their Facebook Friends and found a difference –> the general social capital scores were higher than the Facebook-specific, which certainly makes sense, as everyone has important connections that aren’t on Facebook.

The research questions that keep me up at night relate to how we self-present on SNSs, which are characterized by context collapse (i.e., flattening of multiple audiences into one– your “Friends List”). Even if our offline and online serves aren’t inherently different, our self-presentation strategies vary based on our audience, and SNSs make it more difficult to know your audience and adapt accordingly. I’ll be talking about that at #TtW2011 and am hoping for some awesome conversation on the topic.

[…] why he has such a negative view of people looking at screens: he, like so many others, suffers from digital dualism. I’ve critiqued Amber Case, Jeff Jarvis and others on this blog for failing to make the […]

[…] he has such a negative view of people looking at screens: he, like so many others, suffers from digital dualism. I’ve critiqued Amber Case, Jeff Jarvis and others on this blog for failing to make the […]

[…] Sang takes issue with PJ and I’s statements that the offline and online are mutually constitutive, which seems to “abolish the difference” between the two. I actually think we all agree here and perhaps PJ and I could have been clearer: the two are mutually constitutive, just not fully mutually constitutive. Let me offer new wording: atoms and bits have different properties, influence each other, and together create reality. [I had this same conversation with Bonnie Stewart in the comments section of the digital dualism piece.] […]

[…] looks like quite an eclectic theoretical approach, these guys have been developing a concept of augmented reality to combat the fallacious and inadequate insights offered by what they call digital dualisms – […]

[…] is to link web data with bodily data: genes, neurotransmitters, hormones, cells, etc. We move from digital dualism into a new way of being based on literally incorporating external mechanical objects (and their […]

[…] link two conceptualizations of the important relationship of the on and offline. I will connect (1) my argument that we should abandon the digital dualist assumption that the on and offline are separate in favor […]

[…] link two conceptualizations of the important relationship of the on and offline. I will connect (1) my argument that we should abandon the digital dualist assumption that the on and offline are separate in favor […]

[…] across the United States (and arguably the world) are part of a movement that focuses on the augmentation of the physical and the digital. #Occupy may have been born online but from the very beginning had everything to do with physical […]

[…] tribes. I do not find either to be very convincing- as they mostly fall into the trap of digital dualism. I would rather point to the wide-spread solidarity created by and through the Occupy Wall Street […]

[…] There has been some terrific debate on my theorizing of what I call “augmented reality.” In brief, I reject “digital dualism”, the tendency to view the on and off line as separate spheres, and instead argue that we should view them as enmeshed, creating what I call “augmented reality.” [I talk more about this here.] […]

[…] Ultimate WordPress Cheat Sheet: This is for the guts of WordPress programming, not CSS or HTML. # Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality: “I fundamentally think this digital dualism is a fallacy. Instead, I want to argue that the […]

[…] and managing identity online is for all of us. What’s more, there is increasingly little to no gap between our online and offline selves. It’s not that online identity should reflect real identity; it is real identity. Poole […]

[…] Understanding and managing identity online is for all of us. What’s more, there is increasingly little-to-no gap between our online and offline selves. It’s not that online identity should reflect real identity; it is real identity. Poole […]

[…] Understanding and managing identity online is for all of us. What’s more, there is increasingly little to no gap between our online and offline selves. It’s not that online identity should reflect real identity; it is real identity. Poole […]

[…] and managing identity online is for all of us. What’s more, there is increasingly little to no gap between our online and offline selves. It’s not that online identity should reflect real identity; it is real identity. Poole […]

[…] Chomsky was rewritten for Salon.com (here). The blog has advanced a theoretical position we call “augmented reality,” positioned art as theoretically significant, focused on social justice issues and has […]

[…] into the conceptual fallacy of viewing the online and offline as separate spheres, what I call “digital dualism.” Instead, what this analysis suggests is that our experience, ourselves, our entire world is the […]

[…] from tool to equipment may also help explain (phenomenologically) the waning appeal of the digital dualist perspective (i.e., the belief that the online and offline world are fundamentally separate, rather than […]

[…] from tool to equipment may also help explain (phenomenologically) the waning appeal of the digital dualist perspective (i.e., the belief that the online and offline world are fundamentally separate, rather than […]

[…] Complexity, the work we presented on the Cyborgology panel at #TtW2011, and Nathan’s piece on Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality. It is clear that we are saying that technology is social, but not that the categories ought to be […]

[…] theory of bodies and technology as enmeshed. Further, I have written extensively on what I call “augmented reality,” the perspective that views the on and offline as enmeshed, opposed to the “digital dualist” […]

[…] This excerpt reads more accurately as an evolution of Gibson’s thought than as a description of any real changes in the world. The Web has always already been “everted;” it has always had a dialectical relationship with the physical world. Interestingly, Gibson claimed in a interview at the Chicago Humanities Festival (embedded below, start at 22:25) that one day people will look back on the present historical moment and say it was characterized by “a need to distinguish between what they thought of as the real and the virtual”—what we, on this blog, call “digital dualism.” […]

[…] This excerpt reads more accurately as an evolution of Gibson’s thought than as a description of any real changes in the world. The Web has always already been “everted;” it has always had a dialectical relationship with the physical world. Interestingly, Gibson claimed in a interview at the Chicago Humanities Festival (embedded below, start at 22:25) that one day people will look back on the present historical moment and say it was characterized by “a need to distinguish between what they thought of as the real and the virtual”—what we, on this blog, call “digital dualism.” […]

wow! this is terrific. i did not know about her work. i will try to find a copy of this ASAP. the only other work i have seen this close to the digital dualism / augmented reality topic is katherine hayles work on posthuman-ism (which i also failed to cite in this post, but have subsequently). thanks!

[…] than as an extended network. Finally, Randy Lynn critiques the reductive essentialism through which digital dualism is reproduced within the literature by placing the explanatory focus on the essential nature of the […]

[…] is, in a certain sense, grounded in the lived experience. Also, we would do well to resist a digital dualism that abstracts the “real,” offline experience from “virtual,” online experience. Offline […]

[…] or the idea that “new technologies are extensions to our existing reality”. Another writer, Nathan Jurgenson of Cyborology, argues that the phenomenon is “co-constructed” and that “the digital and […]

[…] Nathan Jurgenson writes that people now enmesh their physical and digital selves to the point where the distinction is becoming irrelevant. Looking back, my experiences in the electronic dance subculture fifteen years ago were my first encounters with the augmented self. There was no distinction between the physical and the digital on the dance floor, and the future materialized through that world in ways that I struggled to understand. […]

[…] is probably the longest-standing, most outspoken proponent of what we at Cyborgology call digital dualism. The separation of physical and virtual selves and the privileging of one over the other is not […]

[…] logical implications of this metaphysical perspective on cyberspace are a perspective of “digital dualism.” The problem for digital dualists is that, despite sci-fi visions of hackers floating in […]

[…] logical implications of this metaphysical perspective on cyberspace are a perspective of “digital dualism.” The problem for digital dualists is that, despite sci-fi visions of hackers floating in […]

[…] is a plug to pull to maneuver from one sphere to the other. Now, when I follow discussions on digital dualism—the perspective that our online and offline worlds are separate—I identify instead with views […]

[…] discoverable on the basis of their interests. You’ll have to excuse me for engaging in a bit of digital dualism, but the social structures and institutions that make up our local worlds do not afford such […]

[…] lived reality is the result of the constant interpenetration of the online and offline. That is, we live in an augmented reality that exists at the intersection of materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies […]

[…] portrayed as an elsewhere, a new and different cyberspace, a tendency I have coined the term “digital dualism” to describe: the habit of viewing the online and offline as largely distinct. The common […]

[…] lived reality is the result of the constant interpenetration of the online and offline. That is, we live in an augmented reality that exists at the intersection of materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies […]

[…] Ontology (what exists?) and phenomenology (how does existence appear to us?) are hard. The digital seems very different than the physical: Shopping at the mall is different than Amazon.com, talking face-to-face is different than texting, cyberwar or cybersex certainly seem different than their offline predecessors. But all these terms are trouble. PJ Rey provides a terrific investigationinto how these differences came to be known in spatial terms built around a collective fiction that digital information could be segregated into some new “cyber” space; the Net, the Web, The Matrix, a fictional Other Place conveniently at once separate but always accessible. This fiction was never tenable, and much of my work has centered on the vanishing point of this­­–what I have coined as “digital dualism.” […]

[…] offline and online experience. It would seem, for instance, that wilderness dualism presaged digital dualism. Moreover, his critique of the early wilderness tourists raises important questions for those who […]

[…] both online and offline interaction. Digital dualists (those who believe online and offline are separate worlds or realities) would do well to observe the very real effects that Dani’s offline activities had on her […]

“Besides Turkle’s Alone Together, there is Carr’s The Shallows, Morozov’s The Net Delusion…”

Haven read these works, I’m worried that your “digital dualism” charge is a total strawman. I haven’t read any of them as idealizing the non-digital or positing completely separate worlds. Morozov, for instance, is more focused on taking down the poorly conceived techno-optimism surrounding the Internet in the third world than setting up a false binary between offline and online. He attacks the mindset that the simple addition of an augmenting technology will automatically bring democracy. I simply don’t think the aim of his work is to add to any “digital dualist” literature. Furthermore, each of them seem to me to be actually focused on the same kind of interactions between off and online environments/activities that you argue that they ought to be focused on. The main arguments of Turkle and Carr lend themselves to an argument that our interactions with and through digital technologies have a effects that ramify to affect our off-line thinking and behavior. The on and offline worlds cannot be a distinct in their work as you make it out to be if they are arguing to the effect that there are linkages or interdependencies between the two areas. Nicholas Carr doesn’t even argue that the effects of technology on thinking is unique to digital environments. He discusses writing and the typewriter as well. I really think the only distinction is that they are more critical about the limitations of our technologies and the unintended side-effects of particular modes of augmentation on the self and our behavior, which are of course contingent on the design of the technology and the society that it is placed in. You may disagree with the degree that they take these side effects to be problems or the magnitude to which they actually may exist but that is really a completely different argument than you’ve made here.

digital dualism is not “idealizing the non-digital” – this is a misreading of the argument. however, it is a possible outcome, just as is idealizing the digital. but one can idealize either through a dualist or augmented lens. i’ll grant your point re:Morozov’s book.

on Turkle, think of the Second Self concept: two distinct selves, often interrelated, not one self the byproduct of physicality and information in its many forms. the latter view is more in line with Haraway’s “cyborg’ theory that gives this blog its name. Second Self vs Cyborg Self is a good example of digital dualism versus augmented reality.

digital dualism comes in degrees. you are right, it is rare to find someone who says the on and offline are completely separate and have nothing to do with each other. that is the straw-figure version of my argument, and not an argument i am making here. instead, it is more useful to look at the *degrees* of dualism instead of a simple binary. weber’s discussion of “ideal types” that are useful for conceptualizing might be useful here.

[…] more controlled, less messy, less human – at least on our end. This kind of discourse is classically digital dualist; it assumes that the relationship between physical and digital – or between human and […]

I haven’t read the comments, but doesn’t the idea of an augmented reality being more valid than the idea of a digital dualist world pre-suppose people have no choice but to participate in things like Facebook and the internet? It should be noted, we have the choice to refuse participating in websites like Facebook, or the internet at large (directly). After all, no one is forcing us (yet) to use the internet, it’s of our free will to do so. I de-activated my Facebook account over a year ago, and I feel much more healthy and social as a result, in all honestly. In my existence, I’ve found the more that digital technology gets further integrated in my life, the less alive I feel. The idea of ‘popcorn brain’ is also something we ought to take seriously, as the DSM is going to include internet addiction soon. I’d rather keep the internet and digital devices separated from the rest of my life, and limiting it as much as possible. We are the voluntary guinea pigs of this technology, and it’s hard to predict how it will affect people in the long term.

doesn’t the idea of an augmented reality being more valid than the idea of a digital dualist world pre-suppose people have no choice but to participate in things like Facebook and the internet?

exactly, yes. just not “participate” the way you might think. for example, not having a facebook profile does not shield anyone from the influence of facebook and the rest of the digital world you didnt sign up for. there’s been some interesting commentary about how not having a facebook profile influences other’s judgements about you, job prospects, social capital, what conversations you’ll be in on and miss, and so on.

also, all the “augmented” perspective implies is that which is digital has influence on the material; and vice versa, it does not maintain that any of this is a good or bad thing.

there’s been some terrific posts on this blog by others about how one can not truly opt-out of digitality:

oh, I’m not disputing that these things will influence the world at large, regardless of how an individual decides to participate with it, or resist it. Sorry if that comment came off as if I didn’t get that. However, I think it might perhaps move into dangerous territory if the social stigma increases with individuals who decide to opt out of direct participation, from the result of overriding philosophies that these technologies are integrated within the world no matter what. Perhaps, in a similar manner that overriding philosophies in most societies that a person’s diet needs to include meat, when that’s not true. A person does have the choice to not integrate these technologies within their life, in a similar way they could decide to go on strict digital diets, and limit intake, or completely go off the grid. There’s no way of assessing whether it will benefit or hinder any existence as a result, but I’m curious to read the other articles you listed. I always liked that character from Goodfellas who never used a telephone btw haha

A recent trend I’ve noticed is a fair amount of punks in NYC these days are purposely sticking to dumb phones, and de-activating their facebooks, getting off the grid. The best quote I heard in regards to this, was something to the effect of “I don’t want my phone to be smart, I want to be smart” The strange dependency people develop with their gadgets can seem alarming to me. I worry about young children who might not retain knowledge, due to being introduced to something like Siri early on. If people become increasingly dependent on these things, I dunno… I have a hunch that Generation Z might be abundantly more critical of these technologies than Gen Y is/was. It’s not like I hate the internet or anything, just trying to stay a critical thinker, and dieting. I don’t want a severe case of popcorn brain :o)

“it might perhaps move into dangerous territory if the social stigma increases with individuals who decide to opt out of direct participation [with digital tools]”

that is an important concern. in fact, it is the digital dualist assumption that one can log out (you cant) that makes the stigma possible. it is also evidence of how much the digital influences material reality even for those who log off. i think you bring up a good point here!

i’ve also noticed the trend of dumb phones, vinyl, film cameras, no-facebook, etc. there’s good debate on how we should talk about this–is it a fashion? moral? (both?)–and it gets at what i was discussing in the IRL Fetish piece i link to in my previous comment. what seems obvious is that while so many are thinking digital connection is taking over everything, there is a very healthy anti-digital connection fervor in some circles, and a great deal of that ethic with nearly all social media users (e.g., the photos posted to facebook are usually of times when you were enjoying being NOt on facebook).

[…] more controlled, less messy, less human – at least on our end. This kind of discourse is classically digital dualist; it assumes that the relationship between physical and digital – or between human and […]

[…] Reality is augmented—characterized by the entwinement of human and technologies rather than their categorical separation. Digital and physical, online and offline are false dichotomies that the bloggers here at Cyborgology actively work to blur. […]

[…] I am proposing an alternative view that states that our reality is both technological and organic, both digital and physical, all at once. We are not crossing in and out of separate digital and physical realities, ala The Matrix, but instead live in one reality, one that is augmented by atoms and bits. And our selves are not separated across these two spheres as some dualistic “first” and “second” self, but is instead an augmented self. A Haraway-like cyborg self comprised of a physical body as well as our digital Profile, acting in constant dialogue. Our Facebook profiles reflect who we know and what we do offline, and our offline lives are impacted by what happens on Facebook (e.g., how we might change our behaviors in order to create a more ideal documentation). […]

[…] "Digital dualists believe that the digital world is “virtual” and the physical world “real.” This bias motivates many of the critiques of sites like Facebook and the rest of the social web and I fundamentally think this digital dualism is a fallacy. Instead, I want to argue that the digital and physical are increasingly meshed, and want to call this opposite perspective that implodes atoms and bits rather than holding them conceptually separate augmented reality." […]

[…] digital-dualist frame the separates ‘real’ and online life.” As most readers here know, I coined the term digital dualism and provided the definition on this blog and thus have some vested interest in how it is deployed. And Harris’ analysis that follows […]

[…] The power of social media to burrow dramatically into our everyday lives as well as the near ubiquity of new technologies such as mobile phones has forced us all to conceptualize the digital and the physical; the on- and off-line. And some have a bias to see the digital and the physical as separate; what I am calling digital dualism. Digital dualists believe that the digital world is “virtual” and the physical world “real.” This bias motivates many of the critiques of sites like Facebook and the rest of the social web and I fundamentally think this digital dualism is a fallacy. Instead, I want to argue that the digital and physical are increasingly meshed, and want to call this opposite perspective that implodes atoms and bits rather than holding them conceptually separate augmented reality. […]

[…] The power of social media to burrow dramatically into our everyday lives as well as the near ubiquity of new technologies such as mobile phones has forced us all to conceptualize the digital and the physical; the on- and off-line. And some have a bias to see the digital and the physical as separate; what I am calling digital dualism. Digital dualists believe that the digital world is “virtual” and the physical world “real.” This bias motivates many of the critiques of sites like Facebook and the rest of the social web and I fundamentally think this digital dualism is a fallacy. Instead, I want to argue that the digital and physical are increasingly meshed, and want to call this opposite perspective that implodes atoms and bits rather than holding them conceptually separate augmented reality. […]

[…] The power of social media to burrow dramatically into our everyday lives as well as the near ubiquity of new technologies such as mobile phones has forced us all to conceptualize the digital and the physical; the on- and off-line. And some have a bias to see the digital and the physical as separate; what I am calling digital dualism. Digital dualists believe that the digital world is “virtual” and the physical world “real.” This bias motivates many of the critiques of sites like Facebook and the rest of the social web and I fundamentally think this digital dualism is a fallacy. Instead, I want to argue that the digital and physical are increasingly meshed, and want to call this opposite perspective that implodes atoms and bits rather than holding them conceptually separate augmented reality. In a 2009 post titled “Towards Theorizing An Augmented Reality,” I discussed geo-tagging (think Foursquare or Facebook Places), street view, face recognition, the Wii controller and the fact that sites like Facebook both impact and are impacted by the physical world to argue that “digital and material realities dialectically co-construct each other.” This is opposed to the notion that the Internet is like the Matrix, where there is a “real” (Zion) that you leave when you enter the virtual space (the Matrix) -an outdated perspective as Facebook is increasingly real and our physical world increasingly digital. I have used this perspective of augmentation to critque dualism when I see it. For instance, last year I posted a rebuttal to the digital-dualist critique of so-called “slacktivism” that claimed “real” activism is being traded for a cyber-based slacker activism. No, cyber-activism should be seen in context with physical world activism and how they interact. Taken alone, yes, much of the cyber-activism would not amount to much. But used in conjunction with offline efforts, it can be powerful. And, of course, my point is much, much easier to make with the subsequent uprisings in the Arab world that utilize both digital and physical organizing. This augmented dissent will be a topic for another post. […]

[…] portrayed as an elsewhere, a new and different cyberspace, a tendency I have coined the term “digital dualism” to describe: the habit of viewing the online and offline as largely distinct. The common […]

[…] Stop Tweeting about Life and Live It This is another popular anti-social media trope, that we are all talking about life rather than experiencing it. I do think there is merit to the line of critique, but some nuance is needed in its deployment. Here, per usual, is the claim that social media is separate from life. Time spent tweeting is time spent not-living. This is a fallacy, what I call “digital dualism”, the incorrect assumption that social media is some other, cyber, space that is separate from “real” life. No, social media is real and, further, research has shown that time spent on social media is often associated with more time spent meeting face-to-face. More on digital dualism here: http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/02/24/digital-dualism-versus-augmented-reality/ […]

[…] We construct an Internet Illness to create an Internet Normal; both of which are predicated on a digital dualist fallacy: these are technological problems with technological solutions. When problems are wrongly […]

[…] We construct an Internet Illness to create an Internet Normal; both of which are predicated on a digital dualist fallacy: these are technological problems with technological solutions. When problems are wrongly […]

[…] not arguing that social only takes place offline while Social happens online—because we are not digital dualists. What we are arguing is that we need to make a conceptual and semantic distinction between the […]

[…] about. Recently I have been preoccupied by the ideas and theories currently being developed by Nathan Jurgenson and other writers at the brilliant cyborgology blog. One of the concepts put forward by […]

[…] we are still trying to understand. Technology is not just a tool we use and put down, or a place we go and return from, we are quickly becoming half-human, half-technology cyborgs. Technology punctuates daily life, […]

[…] might be intrigued by his work exploring online and offline “reality” (see, for example, Digital Dualism and Augmentented Reality, The Facebook Eye, and The IRL Fetish), I asked Nathan Jurgenson if he would join our class on […]

[…] need to believe that fiction and nonfiction are not the same. We need to believe that digital and physical are not the same. We need to believe that online and offline are not the same. We need to believe that past and […]

[…] might be intrigued by his work exploring online and offline “reality” (see, for example, Digital Dualism and Augmentented Reality, The Facebook Eye, and The IRL Fetish), I asked Nathan Jurgenson if he would join our class on […]

[…] issues involved in the technological shift in our society and culture (e.g., the nature of reality, our fluid perceptions of our past, political change, the nature of literacy and our individual and […]

Sorry guys for not reading all of your posts before writing something. From my side, I’ll say that I’ve read some of those posts.

dualism vs augmented

I feel that our world or reality gets augmented because we have more time to think, to respond, digitally and that helps us think about more strategies to express ourselves, either creatively or intelectually.
I feel that being physically active is important but intelectually active by using the net can be good as well, mind and body are connected.
And we know how a picture can many times express more than a 1000 words. Sometimes by incorporating emotions.
So the same happens with us when using facebook for example, there’s more space for emotions so ourselves are enhanced, we’re being reconstructed, which means we are learning in a more powerful way including emotions into us.
We know who we are but the net includes it adding wings to the power of our imagination by using more ways for us to express ourselves.

[…] a comparison between this kind of (what I’ll call) narratological dualism and the concept of digital dualism. Rather than distinct categories that don’t intersect – you can be in one but not the […]

[…] Jurgenson has written extensively that the duality of “real” life versus “online” life is a false one. We are real to any extent or to no extent in both contexts. I have found that to be true. Those who […]

[…] within authors. In Byer’s first part of his essay, he introduces Nathan Jurgenson’s idea of a Digital Dualism Fallacy. We, humans, always talk about “technology” or “the Internet” as if it were a force outside […]

[…] world. Nathan Jurgenson has given a name to this fallacy: digital dualism. Ever since Nathan posted Digital dualism versus augmented reality I have been preoccupied with a singular question: where did this thinking come from? Its too […]

[…] some pretty compelling ways. As both he and Am Sonntag note, this kind of thinking is also classic digital-dualist thinking: if technology is separate from “real” lived experience, why should one assume […]

[…] The concept of “augmented” reality is what techno-sociologist Nathan Jurgenson explores. He found fault in the dualistic view for describing the human behaviors present in human technology. Hence, he wrote this explanation: […]

[…] was a term coined by Nathan Jurgenson, in a post he made in February 2011 entitled “Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality.” I think he says it best, so I’ll direct quote his definition and stance on digital […]

[…] doesn’t call himself a digital dualist, and this article was written years before Jurgenson coined the term. However, the nearly 5,000 word piece does go a long way towards giving the reader an idea of who […]

[…] both appropriated the term “augmented reality” and coined the new term “digital dualism” in February of 2011. I gave an overview of the next 18 months of related work in an August 2012 post about what I saw […]

[…] in a way I personally have not seen before. It started when I, some random graduate student, tossed out the idea on a mostly unheard of blog. But then lots and lots of smart people joined in, as Whitney has […]

[…] going on in the debate, however; even Jurgenson, who initiated this discussion with his blog post The IRL Fetish, seems to tacitly admit that there’s a meaningful distinction to be made between the digital […]

[…] years ago, in February 2011, Nathan Jurgenson published a post on Cyborgology entitled Digital dualism versus augmented reality. In this text, he used the term ‘digital dualism’ for the first time. Here is an […]

[…] and Cyborgology editors who organize Theorizing the Web, have argued often and persuasively against digital dualism, the idea that on and offline represent different realities and that what takes place online is […]

[…] Nathan Jurgenson terms this argument digital dualism (you can read his critique on digital dualism here). I am a staunch opponent of digital dualism, as it bifurcates digital and physical in two […]

[…] best thing about internet, as far as reading is concerned, is the hyperlinks. I once came across an article on digital dualism by Nathan Jurgenson. I was thinking about this argument in my head for a long time, but had not […]

[…] Digital dualism can blind us to the real and serious problems of online vigilantism. There’s no excusing it with reference to bits or tubes: It is plain, old vigilantism with no place in our society. […]

[…] a weary acceptance of surveillance, or indifference, then what does this say about theories of augmented reality, our understanding of privacy and the debate over civil liberties? Are we talking about […]

[…] that the distinction between the “online” and “offline” worlds is quickly becoming grey, vague and irrelevant. We aren’t operating in an esoteric virtual space here that’s divorced from reality- […]

[…] Just a few days prior I logged on to Facebook and was greeted by the tragic news that a former student had unexpectedly passed away. Because we had several mutual connections, photographs of the young man found their way into my news feed for several days. It was odd and disconcerting and terribly sad all at once. I don’t know what I think of the social media mourning. It makes me uneasy, but I won’t criticize what might bring others solace. In any case, it is, like death itself, an unavoidable reality of our social media experience. Death is no digital dualist. […]

[…] of quick observations. Last week, I wrote a post about the concept of digital dualism, which was coined by some sociologists in the US. Now, I can think of many words to describe Tony’s thinking about the military coup in Egypt, […]

[…] offline as authentic and the online as hollow, false, unreal. This may be a false distinction, digital dualism, as Nathan Jurgenson calls it, but it’s a widespread reaction to the technologies at hand. […]

[…] the offline as authentic and the online as hollow, false, unreal. This may be a false distinction, digital dualism, as Nathan Jurgenson calls it, but it’s a widespread reaction to the technologies at hand. […]

[…] the offline as authentic and the online as hollow, false, unreal. This may be a false distinction, digital dualism, as Nathan Jurgenson calls it, but it’s a widespread reaction to the technologies at hand. […]

[…] SFF for a long time now. And I believe one particular flavor of it actually has ties to elements of digital dualist thinking, albeit working in a different direction than most of the other settings in which it can be […]

[…] My critique of digital dualism is not just that what we call “virtual” is very real but also what we call “real” is also always highly virtual. The art gallery is a good example: The idea of a gallery is to create a tool premised on delineating what is and isn’t art, an architecture that deeply structures our actions, the intense performativity of us-actors in that space all create a highly simulated environment. […]

[…] important; the company hired social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson, best known for his scornful coining of the phrase “digital dualism,” to write for its product blog. Snapchat, an app first promoted […]

[…] already there. Then, by following the link to Nathan Jurgenson’s Cyborgology blog article about digital dualism (the questionable practice of seeing our onsite and online personalities as different rather than […]

[…] the offline as authentic and the online as hollow, false, unreal. This may be a false distinction, digital dualism, as Nathan Jurgenson calls it, but it’s a widespread reaction to the technologies at hand. […]

[…] File this one under “what is at stake” when we talk about the digital dualist critique. Bitcoin, the Internet’s favorite way to buy pot and donate to Ron Paul, hit an all-time high this week of around $900 to one Bitcoin (BTC). The news coverage of Bitcoin and the burgeoning array of crypto-currencies (according to the Wall Street Journal there’s also litecoin, bbqcoin, peercoin, namecoin, and feathercoin) has largely focused on the unstable valuation of the currencies and all of the terrible things people could do with their untraceable Internet money. What hasn’t been investigated however, is the idea that crypto-currencies are somehow inherently more “virtual” and thereby less susceptible to centralized control the way US dollars, Euros, or Dave & Buster’s Powercards are. Both assumptions are wrong and are undergirded by the digital dualist fallacy. […]

[…] After roughly an hour of articulate about practical worlds with Veatch, we ask her what it is she hopes people take divided from her documentary, that premieres on HBO after this year. Surprisingly, this takes her behind to Rome. She mentions something she review about Pope Francis extenuation indulgences — time off from limbo – via Twitter. Then she quotes from an online piece that points out that, either he knew it or not, a Pope resolved with media idealist Nathan Jurgenson’s rejecting of a thought that the practical universe is a graphic space apart from a earthy one. […]

[…] After almost an hour of talking about virtual worlds with Veatch, I ask her what it is she hopes people take away from her documentary, which premieres on HBO later this year. Surprisingly, this takes her back to Rome. She mentions something she read about Pope Francis granting indulgences — time off from purgatory – via Twitter. Then she quotes from an online piece that points out that, whether he knew it or not, the Pope agreed with media theorist Nathan Jurgenson’s rejection of the idea that the virtual world is a distinct space separate from the physical one. […]

[…] After almost an hour of talking about virtual worlds with Veatch, I ask her what it is she hopes people take away from her documentary, which premieres on HBO later this year. Surprisingly, this takes her back to Rome. She mentions something she read about Pope Francis granting indulgences — time off from purgatory – via Twitter. Then she quotes from an online piece that points out that, whether he knew it or not, the Pope agreed with media theorist Nathan Jurgenson’s rejection of the idea that the virtual world is a distinct space separate from the physical one. […]

[…] portrayed as an elsewhere, a new and different cyberspace, a tendency I have coined the term “digital dualism” to describe: the habit of viewing the online and offline as largely distinct. The common […]

[…] and managing identity online is for all of us. What’s more, there is increasingly little to no gap between our online and offline selves. It’s not that online identity should reflect real identity; it is real identity. Poole […]

[…] Nathan Jurgenson has given a name to this fallacy: digital dualism. Ever since Nathan posted Digital dualism versus augmented reality I have been preoccupied with a singular question: where did this thinking come from? Its too […]

[…] and discussing it with my friends along the way, I’ve realized just how legitimate the term “digital dualism” is. It’s the idea that our lives are real whether they’re happening on the Internet or in […]

[…] and discussing it with my friends along the way, I’ve realized just how legitimate the term “digital dualism” is. It’s the idea that our lives are real whether they’re happening on the Internet or in […]

[…] and discussing it with my friends along the way, I’ve realized just how legitimate the term “digital dualism” is. It’s the idea that our lives are real whether they’re happening on the Internet or in […]

[…] and discussing it with my friends along the way, I’ve realized just how legitimate the term “digital dualism” is. It’s the idea that our lives are real whether they’re happening on the Internet or […]

[…] and discussing it with my friends along the way, I’ve realized just how legitimate the term “digital dualism” is. It’s the idea that our lives are real whether they’re happening on the Internet or […]

[…] tells us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing digital dualism (the merging of our digital and physical lives) sprout up in different ways across all of the […]

[…] tells us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing digital dualism (the merging of our digital and physical lives) sprout up in different ways across all of the […]

[…] tells us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing digital dualism (the merging of our digital and physical lives) sprout up in different ways across all of the […]

[…] tells us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing digital dualism (the merging of our digital and physical lives) sprout up in different ways across all of the […]

[…] tells us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing digital dualism (the merging of our digital and physical lives) sprout up in different ways across all of the […]

[…] tells us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing digital dualism (the merging of our digital and physical lives) sprout up in different ways across all of the […]

[…] I am proposing an alternative view that states that our reality is both technological and organic, both digital and physical, all at once. We are not crossing in and out of separate digital and physical realities, ala The Matrix, but instead live in one reality, one that is augmented by atoms and bits. And our selves are not separated across these two spheres as some dualistic “first” and “second” self, but is instead an augmented self. ~ Cyborgology […]

[…] tells us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing digital dualism (the merging of our digital and physical lives) sprout up in different ways across all of the […]

[…] tells us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing digital dualism (the merging of our digital and physical lives) sprout up in different ways across all of the […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] tells us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing digital dualism[2] (the merging of our digital and physical lives) sprout up in different ways across all of the […]

[…] According to the Urban Dictionary, yo is, among other things, “A contraction of the possessive prenominal adjective ‘your’”. But it’s much more, of course, and the astonishing popularity of this simplest of apps is being interpreted as a sign not only of our times but of emerging digital dualism. […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where a mobile amicable landscape is headed. We’re saying a genocide of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging a earthy and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where a mobile amicable landscape is headed. We’re saying a genocide of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging a earthy and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where a mobile amicable landscape is headed. We’re saying a genocide of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging a earthy and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] us something bigger about where a mobile amicable landscape is headed. We’re saying a genocide of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging a earthy and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] Digital dualism is also to blame. Some people seem to operate under the assumption that they are not really racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, etc.–they just play one on Twitter. It really is much too late in the game to play that tired card. […]

[…] identity creates an augmented reality. Nathan Jurgenson makes some good points in his blog titled “Digital Dualism vs. Augmented Reality” For me digital dualism does not exist as I use social media to connect with those in my physical […]

[…] We really try to practice what we preach with the conference: namely, getting away from the “digital dualist” conception of online and offline as separate spaces for social interaction. We set out to […]

[…] us something bigger about where the mobile social landscape is headed. We’re seeing the death of digital dualism play out before us, with apps focused on merging the physical and digital worlds. Snapchat has […]

[…] ever heard of the term digital dualism. Alec @courosa provided us with a link to a website about digital dualism. I could see the point that the author Nathan Jurgenson was trying to get across. Jurgenson […]

[…] Nathan Jurgenson states that some people see the digital and the physical as separate and they believe that the digital world is “virtual” and the physical world “real.” Technology is so ingrained in our daily lives that the virtual and physical worlds have a lot more overlap and Jurgenson argues that the digital and physical are becoming increasingly meshed. […]

[…] logical implications of this metaphysical perspective on cyberspace are a perspective of “digital dualism.” The problem for digital dualists is that, despite sci-fi visions of hackers floating in […]

[…] from the overall web of social conflict. Rather, we should move forward with the assumption that we have one reality, composed of both organic and technological layers. Cyberspace is a sociotechnical system, which as […]

[…] written about the ways in which social media has changed the way we relate to one another, from the digital dualists who argue that we need to privilege our face to face connections by unplugging, to those, like […]

[…] I suggest that discussion of misleading/false online identities can be a somewhat superficial response. It is usually the position of most mainstream media consideration of identity online, a form of ‘DIGITAL DUALISM’ (a term coined at developed by sociologist Nathan Jurgenson on the Cyborgology blog) […]

[…] important; the company hired social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson, best known for his scornful coining of the phrase “digital dualism,” to write for its product blog. Snapchat, an app first promoted […]

Leave a Comment

About Gravatars: The images next to each commenter's name are gravatars.

About Cyborgology

We live in a cyborg society. Technology has infiltrated the most fundamental aspects of our lives: social organization, the body, even our self-concepts. This blog chronicles our new, augmented reality.